Dungeons and Discourse

[Options]

Thank you as usual, Callan, and thanks for the praise, was_fired!  As per Callan's advice, I'll start with trying to define my concept of "good roleplaying" better, then.

While humour is a major goal, it seems consistent with the philosophical theme that we have characters who are specifically driven toward one world-view or personal belief, and this is mostly what I meant when I first mentioned "good role playing," as I imagine this as a necessary axiom for any given game to be interesting.  Thus, I'd say that one of our first things we want to coax out of the player has to be self-consistency.  A Catholic Theologer should turn the other cheek when slapped, not punch back;  Discordians should be fonts of wacky absurdisms; Positivists should be technophiles, and so on. 

That being said, there is a more complex purpose to this.  We're going with the whole "indomitable avatars of reason" concept mainly because we want to, as in the comic, tear the whole structure down (or at least give it a darn good shaking).  This starts to fulfill the second part of that "good roleplaying" statement, humour. This arises when our expectations are thrown out the window in a more-or-less ethically acceptable way, so that's the second thing we want to coax out of a player.  In terms of character, the Catholic, after being slapped, should turn a cheek but might later sneakily kick the aggressor in the shins.  In terms of situation, the Discordian might find himself trapped in Schrodinger's box until he gives in and makes sense for a change, or the Positivist might find that everything he touches turns to silicon.  And, of course, there's always plain old slapstick, which would permeate your standard combat conflict, because philosophers actually going to fisticuffs is really the bread and butter of this game, anyway!

Finally, all of this is naturally quite meaningless without some direction (although for humour's sake, we might allow for some misdirection).  Thus, every character needs to be inevitably hurtling towards some eventual conclusion, which (as mentioned before) it seems best that it would be best to involve some grand finale involving, well, old-school fireworks in the form of exotic monsters, artifacts, hoards of treasure, and the like.  A final bit of systemic humour, as I've envisioned it, is that most of this should be quite ho-hum to any philosopher.  After all, they don't care about the material, right?  They're only really interested in things that could solidify their postion.

The first difficulty I arrive at after this, though, is how we can ask a player to roleplay in ways that are both compliant and contrary to the nature of their characters and still expect to keep that direction without spoiling or amending the humour.  Not only that, but if we're to really keep to the philosophical theme, it would also be good if we have players going at each other at least once an RP session, which also complicates things.  This is where I see the GM stepping in somehow, but I can't yet determine how to do that without making old mistakes, like giving the GM indomitable control over the whole storyline.

Really, what that boils down to is the problem of making a humour game that's not just total random insanity.  Despite my efforts, I've yet to find many good examples of games that have tried to overcome this - does anyone know of any?

[Callan S.]

It's not a game, but Ron did a recent post on the sort of groundwork for a game like that: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=25453.msg245438#msg245438

In part two of that post he quotes this, and describes play derived from it

We all agreed that (a) our PCs were working together as a group, for some cause greater than individual self-interest, (b) our PCs would initially hold quite disparate metaphysical assumptions

That sounds dead on for your game, if I may be so presumptuous!

I'd read what he writes under that. And if that's useful, then read from the start of the post. And if that sounds good, read right from the start of the thread. I know you've got your own forum, so just see which bits are useful. It was a good thread.

[Mike Sugarbaker]

Hey Sean, good to see you here - I'm not so much in the webcomic scene, but I have a print of Dungeons and Discourse (the strip) on my office wall. :-)

Two simple things you could do to support funny play:

1) make Goals public knowledge. When only the individual player and the DM know the Goals, only one other person (the DM) can set the individual player up for hysterical shit. If Goals are public, everyone can make each other awesome.

(Another thing to maybe look at is Keys in The Shadow of Yesterday, as constant, passive reinforcers of whatever behavior they're written toward. Goals are already halfway there, but they could be an opportunity for injecting a lot of humor into the rules: "MORAL RELATIVIST - Gain 1 Treatise when you behave in a totally absolutist way and then deny it later," etc.)

2) in a similar vein, replace DM Amusement with something that everyone can get in on. After all, if your shit is only making one other person at the table (the DM) laugh, is the game really firing on all cylinders? The default thing to steal here is Fan Mail from Prime Time Adventures. You could spin it up like so: when a monster does damage to a PC, each point of damage causes a fanmail token to go into the center of the table. Once per encounter, any player may take a fanmail token from the center of the table and give it to another player. These tokens may then be used to add to your rolls.

A less easy thing to do to support the funny: there's a long-fabled "law" of comedy, the law of three - the theory that in lots of jokes and sketches you something twice, and then the third time around you do something different. Basically, it's a minimal way of codifying the establishment and subsequent breakage of patterns. I have long thought that there's a lot of untapped potential here for game mechanics, but I am nowhere near smart enough to tap it.

Finally, something I have longed to see in D&Dis ever since Aaron mentioned the actual design effort to me at Stumptown Comics Fest: when PCs kill a monster or other DM-created threat, any excess damage beyond what takes the threat's HP to 0 is applied to the DM's hit points. When the DM's hit points reach 0, the game enters the Post-Modern Era: play is no longer directed by a DM, but instead by drawing threats at random from a card deck and assigning them to different players to control. (The DM rolls up a new character to participate in play.) Play proceeds in this fashion until someone levels up to DM status...

(Obviously that'd need some tightening up and probably further rules for it to work at all. But you have to admit the idea is kind of perfect...)

[Options]

Just wanted to make one more post here thanking everyone for their input so far - we're not far from going into Beta now, so things are going to be a little inappropriate for the First Thoughts forum after this, as I'm going to be focusing more on Actual Play.  Still, new thoughts and comments are, as always, welcom, particularly on the new stuff I'll be bringing up here concerning changes for Beta.  And, of course, my apologies for the slow rate of reply. I do read this stuff as soon as it's posted, but I find that brewing up a worthwhile answer takes considerably longer when you do it right.

Mike, you might be happy to know that I have indeed already begun stealing concepts from Shadow of Yesterday   That has been essentially the point of Quale as a reward-generating mechanism to this point.  Quale act as looser "Keys" that generate Treatise (XP-like "items" that can be used for both character advancement and currency).  However, we ran into a problem when we tried classifying them like SoY does, because when it comes to philosophy there are just so bloody many possibilities!  As such, I'm now moving toward a more DitV approach concerning Quale that will use them as elements that partly determine level of conflict, although Quale will still retain some Treatise-generating qualities.  The other factor is going to be Amusement, which I'm decentralizing, as I'll explain more below.

I also love that point about public Goals.  I noticed in the last couple playtests that Goals tend to come out anyway (even in the presence of a single publicly shared Goal, which I've called a Social Contract) so I think I'll give it a shot next round.

One new thing up for talk, inspired by Mike and other playtest comments - I'm now planning to switch to a more tag-team-like combat in Beta where Amusement is determined by the spectators, not the involved parties (i.e. the GM, in many conflicts).  The votes of spectators will raise the effective "accuracy" of the combatant their favor falls upon from round to round.  However, if everyone wants to get involved in the conflict at hand, that's still going to remain an option - there'll just be no accuracy bonuses going around.  Spectators, of course, get about the same rewards as anyone else, even if they sit out the whole round.  On top of that, unanimous votes (where all vote) will be able to function as escalators of conflict alongside invocations of Quale, allowing characters to both use stronger powers and change the conflict type from relatively peaceful to more violent.

That last bit is just plain crazy, though!  Not that it's bad, I just have no idea how I could make that work (It's a bit of a mystery how a GM could have hitpoints under the current system, or even the one I'm planning).  Maybe I need to talk to Mr. Diaz again...

Callan, as ever, you've provided a font of wisdom that I've yet to fully comprehend, even a month later!  I'm not actually as sure how pertinent that particular thread is, though, as I've been moving away from Simulationism in Dungeons and Discourse towards a more Gamist/Narrativist approach that I've found suits the theme better, but I am certainly intrigued by the implications of the Right to Dream in Dungeons and Discourse, as I do occasionally get the feeling that it's in the mix there somewhere despite this.  I've yet to find anything that I can point directly to yet, though.

[Monkeys]

Some unrelated points:

i) the skills seem to be heavily based around combat.

ii) Discordianism and Transhumanism don't really exist other than on the internet, I don't see much point in having them in there.

iii) Suggestion for a power for the Nihilist: That Which Does Not Destroy Me Makes Me Stronger (increases their power if they suffer a major wound eg).

iv) The Utilitarian should have some kind of animal-based power, derived from Peter Singer's conception of animal rights.

v) Marxists should be able to not just interpret the rules, but change them.

vi) There should be a Veil of Ignorance.

[Monkeys]

Some unrelated points:

i) the skills seem to be heavily based around combat.

ii) Discordianism and Transhumanism don't really exist other than on the internet, I don't see much point in having them in there.

iii) Suggestion for a power for the Nihilist: That Which Does Not Destroy Me Makes Me Stronger (increases their power if they suffer a major wound eg).

iv) The Utilitarian should have some kind of animal-based power, derived from Peter Singer's conception of animal rights.

v) Marxists should be able to not just interpret the rules, but change them. Also, transform other Marxists into members of other classes (through bitter polemics against them), Imitate Religion etc.

vi) There should be a Veil of Ignorance.

[Monkeys]

Also also, the ancient Greeks associated each of the Platonic Solids with one of the classical 'elements' - so maybe there should be a power based on Earth that uses a d6, one based on water that uses a d20 etc.

[chronoplasm]

I wonder if maybe voting should play a larger role in resolution?

[Rich F]

iv) The Utilitarian should have some kind of animal-based power, derived from Peter Singer's conception of animal rights.

J.S. Mill / Bentham style classical utilitarianism should function as precognition, being able to determine the results of likely actions (mechanically you could play them out, then decide at the end of the scene if you want to keep the results or try something else).  You could also use it to evaluate something at a glance (Rainman style).  Possible risks of using too much could include a nervous breakdown.

[Monkeys]

Spectre of Communism: allows a Marxist to take on an intangible form.

Invisible Hand of the Market: allows ? to become invisible.

Redistribution: allows a Marxist to pick the pocket of someone with more wealth than the Marxist has.

Catholic Social Teaching: a weaker form of Redistribution.

The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number: allows a Utilitarian to give a bonus to themselves and all members of their party, but only if the party outnumbers the opposition.

Liberation Theology: A Marxist may cast this on a Catholic. The Catholic can briefly use the powers of a Marxist.

[Monkeys]

Befriend, and Bestow Moral Significance on, Animals.

A Utilitarian may use this power on any animal that the party has befriended. The animal is immediately statted as a character rather than a monster. It rolls ?. If a Buddhist or Hindu dies, they may attempt to enter the animal's body, by ?.

[Monkeys]

Undermine Colonialist Discourse:

If a Post-Modernist is in the party, monsters with a reaction of "always attack" actually have a random reaction.

[Monkeys]

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